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BRIDGES - To assess the production and impact of migration narratives

The project is funded under the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Programme for Research and Innovation and is coordinated by CIDOB – Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (Spain).

Project objectives

BRIDGES aims to understand the causes and consequences of migration narratives in a context of increasing politicisation and polarisation. By focusing on six current/former EU countries (FR, GE, HU, IT, SP, and UK), it has a three-fold objective.

First, at the academic level, it aims to understand the processes of narrative production and impact and their mutual interaction. This entails analysing: a) why some narratives have become dominant over others in public and political debates from a historical perspective; b) how narratives shape individual attitudes in Europe and potential migrants’ decisions in countries of origin and transit; c) how narratives impact policy decisions and outputs both at the national and EU levels; and d) how individuals and policymakers become in turn narrative producers (‘shaped shapers’) and influence each other.

Second, at the policy level, it aims to foster evidence-based policies. By developing a typology of government strategies for responding to populist narratives, we will provide policymakers with recommendations on how to redress a tendency towards increasingly symbolic policies in the field of migration and integration. Third, at the societal level, our objective is to create spaces for dialogue between actors involved in narrative production.

The project objectives can only be achieved if we bridge – hence the name BRIDGES – several critical gaps between disciplines and between research and practice. A key added value of the project is its interdisciplinarity and co-production approaches, including three interactive workshops with policy, media and civil society actors, an itinerant photojournalism exhibition and two hip hop contests to reflect on the challenges of multicultural and increasingly diverse societies.